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I read in an ABC news report about a doctor earning $600, 000 a year. University vice chancellors on $1.5 million per year. Dentists earning half a million, whilst many older Australians cannot afford to go to the dentist because of the high cost involved. This is the Australia we now live in. A country, in which 20 of the last 25 years have had LNP Coalition federal governments. Inequity and inequality are riding higher than ever before downunder. This has Americanised us via the concentration of corporate ownership via mergers and takeovers creating duopolies and oligopolies in nearly every sector. This failure of the ACCC and ASIC, under the government’s watch, has stripped away consumer buying power and worker’s rights. The competition watchdog has been asleep at the wheel or paid off by nefarious means and the revolving door. This is the Americanisation of Australia.
Neoliberalism & The Americanisation Process
Neoliberalism has seen governments hand over responsibilities to private interests. Billions of dollars spent on consultants and the gutting of the public service. Transparency is dead and secrecy is the way they do things these days. The Albanese federal Labor government is following suit. It is all about convenience and not getting bogged down by details like public scrutiny. The arrogance of these zombie neoliberal administrations are astounding. Huge salaries for those at the top and a rapidly growing gulf in this 2 speed economy to those at the bottom of the heap. Houses worth millions, whilst Aussies sleep rough in tent cities in parks.
The Unfair Australian Economy US Style
A cost of living crisis, which saw inflation drive rents sky high, along with food and energy costs. None of these essentials have come down, they are just not rising as fast. The housing crisis is not being fixed. Younger Australians are doing it tough too. Wages have not kept up with the rising expenses for a long time. Channel 7 is running a sensationalistic war on young Aussies downunder. Clickbait video content headlined – ‘youth crime wave!’ Nobody is asking the question why younger, desperate Australians might be turning to crime? Could it be that the economy drastically favours older, wealthier folk at the expense of the poorer young? Baby Boomers have cornered the market on tax breaks. Negative gearing, superannuation boltholes for squireling away millions, and the capital gains discount. John Howrad specials for wealthy Australians of a certain vintage.
“Legacy media is an old white people’s thing. Thus, you can understand Channel 7’s war on young Australians in this context. Their viewing audience is older folk and they exploit the fears of that demographic by ramping up sensationalistic coverage of crime porn on the news. It is ‘gangs at large’ and ‘violent home invasions’ shouted to the rooftops. This despite the facts showing that these instances are rare as, especially when you factor in the millions of us that now live in Australian cities. Don’t let the facts get in the way of telling an emotive story designed to freak out oldies, however.”
Aussies Watching Trump’s America
We can watch from afar, Donald Trump’s America, it is like extreme sports with a social Darwinian bent. Heavily armed, masked, military style police beating up on brown skinned Americans. If you want to know where the pardoned Proud Boys militia went after being released from federal prison by Trump, they have signed on to be ICE agents. Now, they get to attack non-whites legally with extra bonuses for meeting increased targets. Picking on the softest of targets is a bullies favourite meat.
Justice US Style
For those of us who have long observed the United States it has been apparent that their justice system is heavily tainted by partisanship and the power of the wealthy to avoid it. Jeffrey Epstein sex trafficked young girls for decades to the rich and famous and, yet no client has ever been held accountable for any crime. We are witnessing Prince Andrew getting his knuckles rapped by his royal family for bringing them into disrepute via his behaviour in the Epstein scandal over many years. American billionaires, meanwhile, face no such wrath from the Trump administration. Funny that, perhaps, it has to do with the cosy friendship that Donald Trump and Jeffrey Epstein enjoyed for 25 years prior to Epstein’s suspicious death in prison. President Trump has sicked the dogs of the DOJ upon his political enemies, James Comey, Letitia James, John Bolton, and many more. His retribution list is longer than his own rap sheet as a convicted felon in the United States.
I wonder about all those right wing warriors downunder, Tony Abbott, the National not net zero party, and their ilk – whether they really see the Americanisation of Australia as good for all Australians. I doubt it. Private health insurance in the US is grossly unfair and is about making some obscenely rich at the expense of the majority of the population. My take on their position, philosophically, is that they see the world as made up of winners and losers. They want to enrich the winners and take what little the losers have. That is the extreme nature of America and how that economy is run.
In Australia, we have a mixed economy, which is part planned and part regulated free market in nature. It has become less government controlled over the last 40 years. This has corresponded with a few Australians becoming billionaires, as privatization of previously public assets went into private hands. The Commonwealth Bank, Qantas, Telstra, and the energy utilities to name a few prominent examples. Tony Abbott tried damned hard to privatize higher education in Australia. The Libs have tried for 50 odd years to get rid of Medicare. They want to make Australia more like America.
Well, with doctors and dentists earning many hundreds of thousands of dollars a year. University vice chancellors on $1.5 million per year. The elite are doing very well here, thank you very much. Meanwhile, the working poor are doing 3 jobs just to get by and Indigenous Australians are still in the same leaky boat. Talk is cheap folks, especially from Labor governments scared of their own shadow or is that Peter Dutton raised from the dead?
We need a Labor government to start acting like a Labor government, not one playing both hands to assuage perceived enemies. Be progressive, carry us forward to a better future for all Australians, not just the wealthy and powerful! Occupying the seat is not enough!
“Baby Boomers have grown up under the misapprehension that the United States of America was there for us. A generation of Australians have grown up weak on this basis. When exactly has the US come to our aid since WW2? The answer is never. On the other hand, how many times has Australia answered the call from America? Korea, Vietnam, The Gulf War, Afghanistan, Iraq and Pine Gap of course. Australians have learned to see our subsidiary role to the US as payment in advance for any serious threat upon our shores. ANZUS was invoked after 9/11 and for the invasion of Afghanistan.”
Robert Sudha Hamilton is the author of What Price Life?; America Matters: Pre-apocalyptic Posts & Essays in the Shadow of Trump; and other titles. NOW AVAILABLE AT APPLE BOOKS & GOOGLE PLAY BOOKS.
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America Matters PDF version
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If you read one book this year make it this one. Knowledge is power & time is running out folks. Every page is filled with insight and truthful accounts of what drives America now and in its past. Great reading for a world on the brink of massive changes – which way will the pendulum tip? Can the greatest nation on earth pull itself out of a tail spin? More than 250 pages of truth serum.
